


what a lady shouldn't

by Heather



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Breastplay, F/F, Fingering, First Kiss, First Time, Groping, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:43:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather
Summary: "Miss Wells," she said, with the most innocent smile she could manage. "What a welcome surprise." In fact, Caroline couldn't think of anything less welcome than a run-in with her late husband's former mistress in a shabby tavern where a lady oughtn't to be seen, but it wasn't as though she could sayPretend you never saw meand flee for her life.





	what a lady shouldn't

**Author's Note:**

> FOR #8

The tavern was not like Caroline had imagined.

When she had fled the house, nearly mad with boredom from weeks of pretending to be sad about George's death, her only thought had been to find somewhere that no one would know her. As dreadful as it was to be pitied for what may well have been the best thing to happen to her since her wedding day, how much worse it would be for her friends and family to think her a scandalous wretch, too heartless to even wait for her husband's corpse to cool before rushing out to the nearest distraction. She had slipped out by byways and back alleys, so desperate to avoid being seen that she had scarcely given a thought to where she might end up. The only image in her mind, vague and half-formed, had been of some place as brazen as she felt, walls a brilliant red, lousy with gold leaf and frippery, with naked ladies lounging about.

By comparison, the tavern disappointed. No fripperies, no naked ladies. The only red that she could spot was in the uniforms of Royal Marines taking drinks at one of the tables. The entire place was so nondescript as to border on invisible, and she had the disappointing thought that for all this effort, she wouldn't even remember what it looked like when she went home.

Worse, now that she was here, she had no idea what on God's green earth she would do. As she knew no one, there was no one here she wanted to talk to and nothing to do but drink. She wasn't much of a drinker; Caroline didn't even like the taste of most wine or beer, and she had always taken to heart her mother's admonishments about whether a lady should drink, what, and how much.

That thought seemed to burn like poison in her belly, and she found herself glowering at the floor with resentment. Lord, was she ever exhausted of worrying about what a lady should do.

She squared her shoulders and tried to think of the least foul-tasting drink she could recall the name of.

She got as far as remembering the name, but not the taste, of Madeira before a familiar perfume wafted beneath her nostrils and a voice behind her noted, flat and amused with a touch of sarcasm, "Lady Caroline Howard. As I live and breathe."

Caroline had the dreadful, sinking feeling of having been caught with her hand in someone else's larder. She tried to look smooth and dignified as she turned. She thought she must look like she was having apoplexy. "Miss Wells," she said, with the most innocent smile she could manage. "What a welcome surprise." In fact, Caroline couldn't think of anything less welcome than a run-in with her late husband's former mistress in a shabby tavern where a lady oughtn't to be seen, but it wasn't as though she could say _Pretend you never saw me_ and flee for her life.

Charlotte was looking at her with a repressed smile, as though she had done just that, and gave an exaggerated curtsy, her head bowed low enough for a queen. "What a pleasure to see you out and about."

Caroline willed herself, without success, not to blush. "I meant to take in the air," she said, "I'm afraid it gets so stifling in that house."

Charlotte cocked her eyebrows, looking like she wasn't sure whether she wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the air in a bloody tavern or to soften the awkwardness with a dollop of sympathy. She seemed to choose the latter. "Yes, I remember."

Too late, Caroline realized that while George was alive, that house had been far more Charlotte's than it had ever been hers. George had found it, purchased it, and even decorated the damn thing without a shred of input from her. She had set foot in it all of twice before he had moved Charlotte in, and only once after while he was still above ground.

"I- I'm sorry," Caroline said, halting over the words. "I didn't mean--"

Charlotte waved it away. "You don't have to be sorry for anything," she said. "I was never much fond of it myself."

"Weren't you?" she asked. "It was your home, after all."

"Think we both know that no home at all is better than a home with Sir George in it," Charlotte said.

Caroline smiled. It may have been inappropriate, even cruel, to take pleasure in the idea of the harlot's misery, but it was the most gratifying thing she had heard since he died. No one else seemed as glad as she had been to see him gone, and even if they had, no one else would say it so plainly. It felt so good to be given permission just to call a bastard by his name, without rebuke for lack of loyalty and respect for the dead.

It was as though Charlotte could read her mind. She grinned at her. "You've been dying for someone to say that."

Caroline blushed again and exhaled a laugh. "I suppose I have."

Charlotte draped an arm around her shoulders, familiar as a sister. "Come on," she said. "I'll buy you a tumbler of gin."

"Oh, I really oughtn't," Caroline said.

"You're far beyond 'oughtn't', my lady," Charlotte said. "Have a drink and piss on his grave. At least in spirit, if not in actual fact."

Caroline covered her mouth to keep herself from laughing loud enough to draw attention to them. "If you insist, Miss Wells," she said, muffled behind her palms.

Charlotte grinned more. "I do," she said and ordered them drinks.

\---

Caroline discovered as soon as she tried it that she had no head for gin. Her eyes were watering after a single sip, and by the time she finished the glass, she thought she might keel over.

"Oh," she said. "That's something, isn't it?"

Charlotte hadn't yet touched her own glass and was looking at her with a mixture of merriment and pity. "I never thought I would see someone of your sort bolt it down so fast."

"My sort," Caroline said, trying to raise her eyebrows. Her face felt so loose, she couldn't be sure she was doing it. "What sort is that, Miss Wells?" She looked at Charlotte's glass, which was blurring into triplicate in her vision, and contemplated taking it.

Charlotte could see that, it seemed. She slid her glass just a little further out of Caroline's reach. "It was my understanding," she said, "that you were a lady of great esteem."

She snorted. "Hardly a lady," she said, "and no esteem at all. I am the third daughter of a country baronet, with nothing to recommend me but that I am of exceptional manners and good behavior." She swiped across the table for Charlotte's scooted glass and missed by miles.

Charlotte laughed. "I can't imagine how I didn't see that before."

"You would acquit yourself just as well, like as not," Caroline said. "Indeed, I think I read once that you had."

Charlotte's eyebrows went up, a ghost of a smile tugging at her lower lip, and her eyes lit with interest. "Have you, now?"

Damn. Caroline hadn't meant to say that. Bloody gin. "Yes," she said, in a grumble as though she was grudgingly confessing a sin. "When I... was told that George had taken up with you, I wanted to know just what sort of mistress he had." What sort of woman she was competing with, she didn't say, and felt proud of herself for keeping it back.

"And went ferreting about in the gossip rags for my initials, did you?" Far from accusatory, Charlotte seemed delighted by the thought of Caroline pawing through papers for a hint of her identity. Caroline suspected that it had never occurred to her that her cull's wife might be jealous before, and the idea gave her a sense of flattery.

"In fact, it was Harris' List," Caroline said, reddening from the gin or the humiliation or both. "God, but it was a horror to get my hands on. I couldn't be seen buying such a thing. I- I waylaid a street urchin and gave him a shilling to buy a copy for me."

Charlotte burst into laughter.

"Oh, don't," Caroline said. "It was the most embarrassing moment of my life up til now."

"Sorry," Charlotte said, not looking sorry at all. She dabbed at one of her eyes with a bare knuckle. "And what did you think of what you read?"

Caroline considered saying that she had been disappointed that George's harlot wasn't ugly, dirty, and toothless, the sort of woman he rightly deserved; that she had felt plain and inadequate upon reading Charlotte's lavish praises, comparing her to a star, while Caroline had never been compared to anything more exciting than her parents' house. (George there, saying she was as dour and phlegmatic as the home she grew up in- hardly the glowing compliments Charlotte Wells inspired.)

Instead, she admitted the most flattering part of the truth. "I thought he didn't deserve you."

Charlotte smiled at her. Not the mischevious, teasing sort of smile she had given her so far- a warmer, softer one, gentle in a face that did not often have cause for being gentle. She reached across the table to curl her hand, as loving as her smile, around Caroline's. "He didn't deserve you, either, you know."

Almost against her will, Caroline found herself smiling back. "You hardly know me."

"I hardly have to," Charlotte said. "Dogs deserve better than the affections of Sir George."

Caroline jerked her hand away and clamped it hard over her own mouth, trying to hold in the screaming laughter she wanted to let out.

She was grinning again. "They're probably better lovers besides."

Caroline kept sniggering behind her hands.

Charlotte shook her head, still grinning. "You're definitely tipsy, my lady."

She drew her hands away from her face, trying to regain her composure. "I think I just might be," she said. "With a touch of madness besides."

"You seem less than a perfect lunatic to me," Charlotte said.

Caroline let out a harsh breath of a humorless laugh. "I wasn't precisely demurring when I said I wanted to take in some air by coming here," she said. "I really was going to be clawing the wallpaper to ribbons if I stayed in that house another instant."

She nodded. "I would be as well if I were you," she said. "Having to observe proper mourning for someone I despised."

"Yes," Caroline said. "And I had thought I was free of him after all." She sighed. "I wanted to go somewhere that no one knew me. Somewhere- somewhere scandalous, in fact. Where I wouldn't have to act the part of the lady."

Charlotte looked amused again. "You seem to have done well enough for yourself there."

"Not well enough by half," Caroline said. She gave her an embarrassed smile. "I had imagined fleeing to some sort of Bacchanal."

"Really?" Charlotte said, folding her arms across her chest like she was trying to imitate a scolding mother. If she was, it was a dismal failure. No scolding mother ever looked so pleasantly surprised.

Caroline felt her smile turn shy. "Wine, women, and song sort of thing."

"I could take you somewhere like that," Charlotte said.

She gave a conceding gesture. "I suppose you could." If anyone knew of such a place, it would have to be Charlotte Wells, wouldn't it?

Charlotte rolled her eyes, chuckling. "I was offering, my lady. Not testifying to my experience."

"Oh," Caroline said. Then it struck her what Charlotte meant, and she sat bolt upright in her chair. "Oh."

"Of course, if you'd rather not," Charlotte said.

"No, I--" Caroline rubbed a circle into one of her own temples, trying to force her head to stop swimming so she could think. "You mean- your house?" _A house of ill repute,_ said a voice in her head, which sounded suspiciously like her mother's.

"If you want," Charlotte said.

Caroline gaped at her.

Charlotte waited, patient to the point of theatricality, for her answer.

"I think," Caroline said, finding her voice at last, "that I shall need another tumbler of gin first."

\---

The hour was late, but Lydia Quigley's house in Kensington Square was still brightly lit, with the laughter inside audible even out here in the street.

Caroline swayed on her feet at the sight of it. (Charlotte had, in fact, purchased her that second tumbler of gin, perhaps sensing that Caroline was in need of its encouragement.)

She stared at the front entrance- the door to a real brothel!- and wondered if any amount of gin could have been enough. "Are we going in?"

"Not this way," Charlotte said. "If Quigley sees you, you'll be paying the blackmail to her until one of you is rotting in the ground. Her only joy in life is having something to hang over everybody's heads."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Caroline sensed that as a danger, that she could be ruined for life if she didn't turn around this very instant. But it was buried deep behind spirits and morbid curiosity, so she only asked, "Then how shall we get in?"

Charlotte gave her another pleased look and held a silencing finger to her lips. "This way." She led her off to the side and around the back.

Caroline came to the sluggish realization she was taking her to the kitchen entrance- the servants' entrance. She might have been offended, had she been able to feel anything but some barely registered shock that brothels had kitchens. Somehow, it had never quite occurred to her before that women like Charlotte ate. Perhaps they even took afternoon tea and drank the same brew that she did.

The idea of Charlotte Wells drinking the same tea as her seemed outrageously funny, and Caroline laughed, just a touch like a more perfect lunatic.

Charlotte raised her finger to her lips again and shushed her. "Quiet now," she said. "They'll hear."

Caroline clamped her lips shut in the same exaggerated way Charlotte had curtsied to her earlier. Charlotte watched her for a moment, scrutinizing her for the appearance of another outburst. It felt like an eternity before she decided there wasn't one coming and led Caroline in the back door.

They sneaked together, silent as shadows until Charlotte let her peek just around the corner of a wall.

The inside of Quigley's was everything Caroline had hoped for when she had fled for the tavern earlier. There were gilded bits of furniture and chandeliers nearly everywhere, with so many light sources that it seemed bright as day inside. Plush-looking sofas bore the weight of half a dozen drunken, laughing men- and girls. So very many lovely-looking girls, in so very many stages of undress.

Caroline felt her jaw going slack as she gaped at one man she thought she recognized but couldn't name, who had a pair of ladies all to himself, one at each hip. They were leaning across him like an archway formed over his lap, kissing passionately while one played with the other's bare breasts.

Caroline had never thought about women touching other women before. Those two seemed to be enjoying it. They smiled between each kiss, and the topless one let out quiet, contented little moans each time her partner's thumbs brushed across her nipples, grown hard as bullets.

She could feel her own growing hard beneath her gown, as though she were the one being caressed. She folded her arms across her chest, self-conscious.

Charlotte seemed to be watching her with amusement again. "Never seen the like?" she asked, sotto-voiced, within an inch of Caroline's ear. Caroline hadn't even noticed her drawing so close.

"Of course not," Caroline said, just as quiet and still gaping. One girl bent her head to the other's breast, kissing in a ring around the nipple before she sucked it in between her lips. "This is something they do- often?"

"It's their preference," Charlotte said. "Once in a while, a man fancies the chance to watch. They've made it work for them."

The topless one pushed the other onto her back on the arm of the sofa and leaned over the man's lap even further to start unlacing the other's gown. He was laughing, stroking her bare back down to her posterior, while she worked to undress her companion.

"They certainly seem to have," Caroline said, swallowing. One was now kissing her way down the other's belly, lifting her skirts as she went until Caroline could see everything. She bit her lip to hold in a gasp.

"You needn't pretend not to be shocked," Charlotte said in her ear, wicked as an imp.

Caroline tried to formulate a retort- something about how Charlotte needn't pretend she had any purpose but to shock her- when instead her hazy mind proffered up an honest question. "Have you ever been called upon to perform in such a way?"

Charlotte laughed under her breath. "You mean have I ever fucked a girl?"

Caroline felt herself blushing. It was rude, surely, to ask such a thing, and she told herself that on a more sober day, she wouldn't have dreamed of it.

Of course, on all of her more sober days previous to this one, she wouldn't have dreamed it was possible for a woman to fuck a girl, so perhaps she oughtn't to feel so proud of herself.

She gulped, smiled a very strained smile, and admitted, "Oh, very well- yes, that is what I mean."

Charlotte smiled back, wistful, and said, "Only once, when I was a sprat, fresh turned out. A gentleman acquired me to share with his wife."

"Oh," was all Caroline could think of to say. Then she asked, "How old were you?"

Charlotte looked stonier at this. "Old enough," she said.

Caroline turned her attention back to the ladies on the sofa, one with her face buried between the other's legs. The man who had hired them had taken over playing with her breasts.

For a moment, Caroline imagined what it would be like, to lie sprawled like that, being teased and tasted, and her body seemed to cry out with sudden yearning.

She couldn't remember a time she had ever enjoyed the sexual act- who could, with a husband like George, who went limp at the slightest provocation and cursed you for bewitching him into flaccidity? But watching the face of the lady enjoying the attentions of both sexes, Caroline felt an insistent throbbing between her legs and wondered if it might be pleasurable with someone whose only job it was to give you release.

She noticed Charlotte's perfume again and imagined that smell in her bed, sheets all askew with a wild girl lying beneath them. The idea gave her such a fierce hunger that Caroline dared to glance, as subtly as she could, at Charlotte's breasts.

They looked soft, Caroline thought. Inviting.

She glimpsed the ladies on the sofa out of the corner of her eye and wondered, with a feverish desire she barely understood, what it would be like to suck Charlotte Wells' nipples.

"Are you well, my lady?" Charlotte asked, chewing her lip with a look like she was worried she had gone too far.

Caroline reached out, tentative, and brushed her hands over the shape of Charlotte's breasts.

Charlotte neither gasped in shock nor pulled away, but instead looked at her with surprise and curiosity.

"I'm sorry," Caroline said, still feathering her fingers over Charlotte's breasts, bent on finding her nipples through the fabric. "You're just so lovely. And I had never even thought, before, about--" Words failed her. She tugged at Charlotte's neckline instead, her fingers trying to find their way inside. Caroline felt only barely in control of them.

Charlotte gently took hold of her wrists.

"I'm sorry," Caroline said again.

"Don't be," Charlotte said.

Then she kissed her.

Even knowing it was coming, Caroline nearly yelped into her mouth. She had never been kissed with such sincerity before. Pawing at Charlotte somehow failed to compare, to being kissed like this.

She nudged Charlotte onto the floor and slid into her lap, still kissing her and still fumbling at her breasts with the eagerness of a happy virgin. Charlotte was laughing, only just audible under her breath, while she unlaced her gown for her. The stays gave way and within an instant, Charlotte's bare flesh was beneath her hands.

Caroline let out as quiet a groan as she could, circling Charlotte's nipples with her thumbs. "You're so soft," she said in a whisper. She didn't know why she had expected anything else.

Charlotte's hand slid under her skirts, stroking the length of Caroline's thigh. "So are you," she said, tracing one finger up and up until Caroline could feel it nudging against where she opened.

"Oh," Caroline said, breathless. She had been touched there before, of course- she had, after all, been a married woman. But Charlotte's touch was like her kiss: gentle, loving, and nothing at all like she was only observing the forms on the way to pleasing only herself. Charlotte cared if this was good for her- or at least pretended it with a level of skill that could have made Caroline weep for joy.

She bent her head to Charlotte's breast, kissing all over, and touched her tongue to the peak of one nipple. Charlotte made a contented noise and slid two fingers inside her.

Caroline sucked, sudden and hard so that she wouldn't scream out loud.

Charlotte's fingers pressed deeper inside her, the heel of her hand grinding just below Caroline's mound, finding some place in the cleft that made Caroline's body burn with pleasure. She ground herself against Charlotte's hand, tearing herself away from her breasts to moan indecently into her mouth.

Charlotte beckoned her fingers inside her, turned a thumb to where her palm had been before and gave her a deft, assured stroke.

Caroline let out a cry.

Charlotte swallowed it.

\---

When she woke the next morning, Caroline thought at first that it had all been some sort of demented dream, perhaps from the madness she still felt at being trapped in this house. But the pounding pain in her head was real, and so, too, was Charlotte Wells beside her in her bed, ready and waiting with a glass of water spiked with a few drops of claret to ease a little of her headache.

Charlotte held the glass for her as she sipped, petting her hair until she managed to finish it all.

"Did you bring me home?" Caroline asked, peering over Charlotte's shoulder for any evidence that she had spent the night in Charlotte's room at Quigley's. There was none.

"It wasn't easy," Charlotte said. "You sleep like the dead when you've been well-sated."

Caroline blushed. Memories of the night before began to claw to the surface, accompanied by tactile sensation as vivid as though Charlotte's hand was still three deep against her, stoking her pleasure like a well-tended flame. "I can't imagine what came over me."

Charlotte gave her a teasing grin. "I did," she said.

Caroline laughed, blushing more, and buried her face in her pillow. "I suppose you did," she said. "Well. You and gin."

"I hope I was better than the gin," Charlotte said, rubbing a firm, soothing circle into one of Caroline's temples. It hurt a little, but it was a good sort of hurt. Like Charlotte was pushing back against her headache and squashing it into submission.

You were, Caroline thought, but it seemed an inadequate thing to say. Instead, she asked, biting her lip, "Did you know when you found me in that tavern that that was going to happen? Did you... plan to seduce me?" The thought seemed impossible.

Charlotte shook her head. "No," she said. "But I might have, had I known you would take to it so well."

Was she cursed to spend the rest of her life tinted scarlet from this infernal blushing? "I've never done anything of that sort before," she said. She wasn't sure if she meant _with a woman_ or _with any sort of pleasure._ They were equally true.

"I never thought otherwise," Charlotte said.

Caroline hesitated. "Was it," she started, then stopped and tried again, "Was I--?"

Charlotte stroked her hair again. "You were," she said, then gently kissed her lips.

Caroline relaxed, inching closer to her on the bed. Then a new insecurity seized her. "I- I can pay you. If you need."

She snorted. "That wasn't work," she said. "I've got work aplenty, being the new star of Quigley's and all." She sounded bitter.

Caroline winced. "I'm sorry."

Charlotte waved it away. "No matter."

She chewed her lip in thought. "If it wasn't for- for work," she asked, "then why did you?"

Charlotte shrugged. "For a spot of fun," she said. She thumbed at Caroline's lip, prying it loose from her teeth. "For a pretty face."

Caroline smiled.

There was a silent beat. "And perhaps I felt I owed it to you," Charlotte said. "After spending your money. Fucking your husband. Haranguing you at his funeral dinner." She gave her a feeble, almost embarrassed smile.

"You don't owe me a thing," Caroline said. She made a stab at a joke. "If anything, I ought to pay you for keeping him out of my bed these last few months."

Charlotte laughed and reminded her, "You already did. The money's all yours, as I recall."

"Yes," Caroline said. Emboldened, she added, with an embarrassed smile of her own, "But could any amount of money really be enough?"

Charlotte laughed again. "Perhaps not," she teased. She touched Caroline's cheek. "Perhaps I shall have to take it out in trade."

Caroline felt her knees slide just the slightest bit apart, warmed by the thought. "Perhaps you shall."

Charlotte rested her hand on Caroline's hip, squeezing. "If, of course, you can find some way to behave with me as you like." She made a mock-serious expression. "Within the boundaries of what a proper lady should."

"I imagine I shall think of something," Caroline said. She slid her body fully against Charlotte's on the mattress. "I can be very clever when I want something."

Charlotte tipped her head towards Caroline's lips. "I never doubted that for a moment." She gave her a look more tender than any Caroline had ever seen. "And I never will."


End file.
